Modern Liberalism

[p. 197]

Jean Rey
(Brussels, 13 May 1981)

[p. 199]

[p. 201]

Born:	In Liège on 15 July 1902.
Education:	University of Liège (law).
1926-58:	Barrister at the Court of Appeal of Liège.
1935-58:	Member of the Municipal Council of Liège.
1939-58:	Member of Parliament for Liège.
1940-45:	Prisoner of war in Germany.
1948:	Alternate delegate to the third General Assembly of the United Nations (Paris).
1949:	Alternate delegate to the first Assembly of the Council of Europe.
August 1949-June 1950:	Minister for Reconstruction.
1953:	Alternate delegate to the fifth Assembly of the Council of Europe.
April 1954-Januari 1958:	Minister of Economic Affairs.
1958-67:	Member of the European Commission.
1967-70:	President of the European Commission.
1979-80:	Member of the European Parliament.
1971-1977:	Chairman of S.A. Sofina Chairman of S.A. Papeterie de Belgique.

Honorary President of the International European Movement.

Doctor honoris causa of the Universities of Oxford, Harvard, Pace and Drew (USA) and Liège.

Minister of State

[p. 203]

Interview with Jean Rey

1. Liberalism and Economic Policy

Bolkestein: In 1969 you said that you have evolved towards a more interventionist liberalism. What do you now think of the subsidiarity principle?

Rey: It is evident that Liberalism has evolved over the last 30 or 40 years. Our fathers and grandfathers were rather inclined to the idea that a maximum of freedom ought to be left to men, enterprises and regions, and that the intervention of the state should only be subsidiary, viz. where private initiative does not solve the problem. In this respect our ideas have evolved everywhere. We have a better view of the limitations of freedom. The Belgian liberals call themselves libéraux réformateurs. This means that we don't think private initiative can solve everything and that the intervention of the state in economic affairs is something to be wished for: that is modern Liberalism.

Bolkestein: You have written somewhere: ‘To circumscribe the action of the state in the economic domain is the fundamental problem that confronts the modern state.’ Somewhere else you defined the duties of the state as follows: ‘Neither laisser faire nor to act itself, but to control and to protect.’ Many Socialists would not be content with that. Among Christian Democrats there are many that want to go further. They say that it is not sufficient to control and to protect: the state must intervene actively.

Rey: That is exactly the difference between Liberals and Socialists. If we should go further than the definition which you just quoted, it would not

[p. 204]

be a Liberal position anymore, it would be a Socialist one. I don't think that Liberals feel their message and their point of view have been refuted by events. On the contrary, we are inclined to believe that Liberalism is what is needed by our countries and that a good equilibrium between too much and too little freedom is Liberalism.

Bolkestein: The law of Lacordaire, the Dominican priest of the middle of the nineteenth century, states: ‘Between master and servant, between rich and poor, it is liberty that enslaves and the law that liberates.’ That was more than a century ago. Does it still apply today?

Rey: It was very revolutionary that a century ago a priest who represented Christian philosophy in France should be so bold as to write this phrase but it is, and remains, absolutely true.

2. Trade Unions

Bolkestein: You have warned against the state becoming a dispenser of advantages with the result that powerful group interests conspire against unorganized people. Has it not become very difficult to stop this process?

Rey: It is a problem of limits. How is it possible to draw the line between what is necessary and what is odious? In the second part of the nineteenth century syndicalism was a motor of social progress, of a transformation of society that was very beneficial. We are now in a period of exaggeration. The power of trade unions has increased without limitation, at least in some countries. In Belgium about 70% of the workers belong to an organization, which is three or four times more than is the case in France. The actions of these trade unions have become too heavy for the state. A real problem, which Belgium now has to face, is how to reconcile the necessity of keeping social progress with the need to avoid the extraordinary pressure which these organizations are bringing to bear upon the state. The trade unions have passed the stage of beneficial action and have entered that of exaggeration. Evidently we are in a period of danger.

Bolkestein: Is there a possibility that trade unions in Belgium will play a political rôle?

[p. 205]

Rey: They are already doing that. The influence of trade unions is so powerful that parties which have a close link with them are unable to resist it. This goes for the Socialist Party and the FCTB. When one looks at relations between the CVP and the Organization of Christian Workers, it is evident that the power of this latter organization is greater than that of the party. This is the reason why Belgium is at present in economic danger.

Bolkestein: Does this pose a threat to parliamentary democracy?

Rey: I should not say that it is a threat to democracy, only that parliament is too weak to resist the pressure of the trade unions. Consider the dispute in the first half of 1981 over the consequences of indexation, the link between prices and wages. The workers resist any loosening of this link. Our system is more rigid than that of any other country. It is not without consequences, of course, for unemployment. There is no country in the European Community which has more unemployment than Belgium.

3. Liberty and Responsibility

Bolkestein: You have written: ‘Liberty destroys itself if it does not find in itself the principle of its own limitation.’ You have also said that Liberalism is an attitude more than a doctrine. Here you make an appeal to self-restraint, to self-discipline. Present society is called the permissive society. One wonders whether yours is not a call to the wild, whether one is not fighting a losing battle and whether, in the absence of self-restraint, both in the economic sphere and elsewhere, it won't be necessary to have greater recourse to strict compliance with the law.

Rey: This goes back to the rôle which Liberals play when they are in power. Governments in which Liberals are present are more moderate in their decisions, in the risks they take for currencies and so on, than governments in which there are no Liberals. A government without Liberals very often loses sight of prudence and safety and so creates risks for the economy. That is exactly what we see in Britain.

The responsibility of the state is a consequence of the freedom of the citizens. Even where you give citizens and enterprises much freedom,

[p. 206]

the state remains responsible for the welfare of the whole. Nobody can imagine that without discipline things are going to be for the best. They are not. Liberalism has a great responsibility in this respect.

Bolkestein: In 1961 you wrote something quite harsh about your own country: one works less, one risks less and one is less prepared to go abroad. That indicates a certain decadence. Do you still hold that opinion?

Rey: I have the impression that things are getting worse because Liberals have not been in power long enough to exert their influence. Over the last two years the only period in which the government was reasonable was between the spring and autumn in 1980, when Liberals were in power with the Socialists and Christian Democrats. The Liberals' presence compelled their colleagues to be more moderate in what they were trying to achieve. As soon as the Liberals left the government, financial discipline and a sense of the limitation of the power of the state were forgotten.

4. Decolonization

Bolkestein: Before 1960 many Belgians went to what was then called the Belgian Congo. Do you have the feeling that the process of decolonization there should have taken a different course?

Rey: Of course, it could have been prepared better. The government in Brussels should not have been forced, in the spring of 1960, to make a decision so suddenly and quickly, without having studied it peacefully and at length. The way in which the French behaved was more careful and more reasonable than what we did. We gave too much freedom too quickly to a population that still needed the influence of the Belgian colonists.

But I think it is of no use to remake history 20 years afterwards.

Bolkestein: That is, of course, perfectly true, but if one looks at various countries like Ghana or Tanzania, where the people are materially worse off than they were in 1960, one wonders whether the process that has taken place in Africa over the last 20 years has been to the benefit of the people that live there.

[p. 207]

Rey: That is not the question! You could have put the same question to France in 1789, and asked if the people were happier in the first years of the French Revolution than they were at the end of the monarchy of Louis XVI. That is not at all evident but it does not give a fair account of what happened. The necessity of giving power to the black population was absulutely evident and if the government which came was not the best one, it was nevertheless absolutely inevitable. In the same way, universal suffrage certainly does not make for the best government but it is so much a consequence of our feeling of justice that it is absolutely inevitable. To ask whether this system is the best is not a good question.

5. European Integration

Bolkestein: Do you think that the welfare state, because it is so nationally determined and bound up in national rules and regulations, has inhibited the process of integration of Europe?

Rey: No, I do not think so. European policies are slowly taking the place of national ones. To form ten or, in the future, twelve countries into a federation is a process which is not at all an easy nor a quick one. The evolution which we are now seeing is quite normal. Having been so much involved in all these policies, I am not at all unhappy about the time which is needed for these things to happen. What is true, however, is that under certain influences, e.g. that of the French Government, mainly of General De Gaulle, there has been a break in the evolution. The way in which integration took place after 1966 was not as good as before that time. The fact that we need a certain time to turn national mentalities into European ones is something which should not create astonishment nor anxiety about the future. What has been accomplished quickly are things which were decided in the treaties themselves, e.g. a coal and steel policy and the customs union. All this has been functioning really very well. An economic union, with policies that still have to be decided upon, is, of course, much more difficult than was foreseen at the beginning. Like the oil crises, the great economic crises which now affect all of Europe were not foreseen when the treaties were drafted. The possibility was not, however, overlooked because there are provisions in the treaty for crises and they have been applied. When France had so many difficulties in 1968, we applied articles 108 and 109

[p. 208]

of the treaties which gave the French Government facilities to overcome the problems of that period.

That it takes a long time to construct policy seems to me within the nature of things. Some people say that the Community is now in a period of stagnation, that its development is blocked. If we see what has been achieved in 1978, 1979 and 1980, that is not at all my impression. Within the Community we have realised in the last year two things which are very important. The first is the European Monetary System, which was not foreseen in the treaty and which is functioning better than could have been expected. The second is the election of the European Parliament, which was foreseen in the treaties themselves. After 20 years it took place and now our Parliament has been elected and nobody thinks that there is a way back. If we look outside the Community over the last two years, we see the Tokyo round, which followed the Kennedy round and which safeguards the Community against protectionism. There is also the accession of Greece, which means that the Community has not at all stopped the process of enlargement. The Community is on its way to encompassing all of western, central and southern Europe. In addition, there is the Yaounde Convention, now replaced by the second Lomé Convention, which is like a Marshall Plan of the Community for no less than 60 developing countries.

Bolkestein: You have in the past called attention to Georges Scelle's double law of concentration and decentralization. To what extent has this law become manifest in the European Community?

Rey: The evolution of the Community is a normal one with only one restriction, viz. the growing national tendencies. Apart from these tendencies the progress of the Community in the first 20 years of its existence has been steady, with the construction of policies that were not foreseen at the beginning or were foreseen but still had to be elaborated, like the common agricultural policy. This was put together at the Stresa Conference in July 1958 and then by the efforts of my colleague and friend Sicco Mansholt. Of course, the policy has its faults, which have become more evident after a number of years, but that does not mean at all that it is bad. There are efforts to amend it but nobody is proposing to drop the agricultural policy.

If we look at monetary affairs it is the same. At the time of the treaty

[p. 209]

of Rome nobody dared to include a common monetary policy and one European currency. This was formulated ten years afterwards by Mr. Werner and given expression at the Conference in The Hague, the first summit conference, of December 1969. Our governments are now converted to the idea that it is nonsense to have a customs union and an economic union but to keep currencies that are completely national. We have to construct a system in which currencies slowly become communautaire.

So, chapter by chapter, we see the progress that has been made. At the same time, the idea that we cannot prevent the originality of our different governments, that we have to keep and protect the originality of our new member states and should not make them uniform has also been growing. It seems to me that these two aspects of the law of Georges Scelle have become manifest in the life of the Community.

The problem of national influence on Community decisions is of great concern. When we see that one country with a negative attitude can stop a necessary development, then we begin to realize that the system which has been followed after 1966 and which is not provided for in the treaty, viz. to take decisions in the Council unanimously, is really not the most suitable and that the time has come to amend it.

If we think of the institutions, there is not much to say about the commission which is working on the whole as was laid down in the treaty. If we look at the Parliament, the great change, of course, is its election which has given it much more independence. In the past, Members of Parliament were delegated by the national parliaments and they more or less waited for advice to be asked from them by the Commission and the Council. Now that they are elected, now that the great majority of them does not belong to any national parliament, they feel independent and reprensentative of the population. The atmosphere of this Parliament, of which I myself have been a member from its beginning until July 1980, is thus much more dynamic than during the previous 20 years. Ministers are already obliged to take into account what Parliament is asking for and will be even more so.

The greatest difficulty in the Community lies with the Council of Ministers. Under pressure of the French and of General De Gaulle, in particular, the agreement of Luxemburg was made in 1966, when the French insisted that very important decisions should be taken unanimously. The actual application of this system has been quite different.

[p. 210]

The unanimity system has not been the exception but the rule. This was difficult in the Community of six countries and is more difficult in the Community of nine or ten. Decisions are now taken only when everybody is in agreement. The treaty was not meant like that and Ministers themselves are now aware that the system has to be amended. At their meeting in Paris in December 1974, the Prime Ministers and President Giscard d'Estaing decided not only that the election of the Parliament should take place but also that its power should be increased and that the system of unanimous decisions should no longer be the rule. This decision was officially made and published in December 1974, but it has not been carried out. I think it will be one of the great political battles. It will take the efforts of Parliament, of the Commission and of public opinion to get Ministers to draw the consequences of what they recognize themselves as necessary, that is, to return, perhaps slowly, to the system of majority rule.

Bolkestein: You have been very active in the policy concerning Wallonia. What is your opinion of the regional policy of the EEC?

Rey: It is a beginning. What was put in the treaty is much too modest. It was foreseen that some measures had to be taken in some parts of the Community e.g. near the border that divides Germany in two, but the effort to construct a regional policy as such was succesful only in 1974, after years of efforts by Mr. George Thomson who was a member of the Commission at that time and who convinced Ministers to accept the principle of a regional policy.

6. L'Europe à deux vitesses

Bolkestein: We have no common energy policy and apart from steel, we don't really have an industrial policy. Hence the idea of l'Europe à deux vitesses, especially in view of the enlargement of the Community with Portugal and Spain. Some people feel that those countries that want to move ahead more quickly together should do so, provided that their arrangements are open ended, in other words that other countries are able to join them when they feel ready to do so.

Rey: You are quite right to criticize the absence of decisions in the field

[p. 211]

of energy. It is one of the great failures of the Community not to have been able, since 1973, to draw the consequences of the energy crisis. This is because of resistance by the French, at that time of Mr. Jobert, who, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, quarreled so much with Kissinger at the conference in New York of January 1974. At that time it was impossible for the nine countries to join in a common effort. If the nine had then joined up with the Americans and the Japanese, it is very likely that an agreement would have been made with the oil producers. We would still have given them the price increase they wanted but not such a sudden one as has created the economic crisis in which we find ourselves now.

I have never been in favour of an Europe à deux vitesses. That some countries have more difficulties than others to join a common policy can, of course, be understood. Transitory measures can be taken to help governments in this or that field to join the Community discipline and the common rule. This has been foreseen in the different treaties of enlargement. In the treaty of Rome there is a period of transition of 12 years. There were also special measures for countries that had difficulties in the first six years. These measures have been taken and we are through this transitory period. In the treaty of 22 January 1972, with Great Britain, Denmark and Ireland, transitory periods were also foreseen. In the treaty now in force with Greece, the situation is the same. So transitory periods can be stipulated to help a country to adapt its economy and its social situation to common rules, but the principle of an Europe à deux vitesses seems to me calculated to ensure that those who are in the second vitesse don't do anything to join the first.

Bolkestein: Is not the European Monetary System, which has been joined by all the countries except Britain, an example of an Europe à deux vitesses?

Rey: No, it is an example of a transitory period. Great Britain has never said that it was against the EMS, only that it was not ready at the present time to join the system. There are voices in England saying that the time has come for Britain to join the EMS. My impression is that in the next years this will happen.

[p. 212]

7. Institutional Reform

Bolkestein: Jean François Deniau in his book ‘L'Europe interdite’ says that the Commission should not be responsible to Parliament and that it should amalgamate with the Council of Ministers. What do you think of this?

Rey: Some people say that the treaty ought to be changed but people should first ponder if there is any possibility of finding colleagues who are of the same opinion. It is not because J.F. Deniau thinks the treaty should be changed that the treaty will be changed. Socialists say that the treaty ought to be more Socialist and we have heard Mr. Mitterand himself say that ‘l'Europe sera socialiste ou ne sera pas’, which the Liberals have always said they were against. When we wrote the programme of the Liberal Federation of Europe, we said that quite clearly. At the presidential elections in France of April/May 1981, we heard Mr. Chirac say that the treaty must be changed. Mr. Chirac had not asked if we were ready to change the treaty. There was a greater man than Mr. Chirac to ask this question: General De Gaulle. When General De Gaulle created a crisis by withdrawing his ambassador from Brussels in September 1965, he said at a press conference that the best way would be to sit around the table with the other five countries and to modify the rules of the treaty. Paul Henri Spaak answered on behalf of the five that they were not ready to change the treaty and that the treaty would not be changed. They were ready to study the difficulties of France, to take measures in aid of the French but they were not ready at all to modify the treaty. The treaty had to be applied.

8. Defence

Bolkestein: Before World War II you wrote a report on foreign policy and on neutralism. This is something that is surfacing again. Why is neutralism again coming to the fore, after all the experiences that your country has had?

Rey: There are always people with certain ideas. In this case, they are the Young Socialists, who have no great experience of the past. Belgium has been neutral since 1831, when it parted from The Netherlands. It

[p. 213]

was decided by the powers of that time that Belgium should be neutral. This neutrality was guaranteed by all the great powers. It has not prevented that Belgium was invaded by the Germans in 1914. At the end of the First World War Belgians in all parties gave up the idea that neutrality could protect their country. Perhaps the better way, they thought, would be not to remain neutral but to create close links with the two great powers that had fought on the side of liberty. Links were thus created between France, Great Britain and Belgium in 1920. These links divided our parties in 1936 when Belgium, for internal reasons, again turned to neutrality. This, once more, has not prevented our country from being invaded in May 1940. At the end of World War II there was nobody in Belgium who argued that neutrality had been a good idea. As a result, Belgium has taken part in the treaties of Brussels, of Paris, of NATO and so on. If a tendency to neutralism is now again appearing, this is a result, not of the parties, but of the Young Socialists in Flanders, who believe that neutralism is a way to protect Belgium against the consequences of war. I think they are deluded exactly as we were fifty years ago.

Bolkestein: The European Defence Community never came to anything. We now have the European Political Cooperation which was set up by General De Gaulle and then resisted by Luns. Now the shoe seems to be on the other foot. The other countries want to push the European Political Cooperation but the French seem to resist it.

Rey: I think you are right but the situation has, of course, slowly evolved. Once again, the General was very much responsible. Now that he is no longer there, his followers are blocked because they try to imagine what the General would have thought at the present time. That is useless because the General was evolving himself all the time. When I paid my visit to the General in October 1967 as successor to Hallstein as President, the General told me: ‘Mr. President, if I had been in charge of matters when the treaty of Rome was negotiated, perhaps it would have been different from what it is now; but don't worry, we have accepted it, we have travelled the first half of the road, we must now travel the other half.’

The General was speaking of his own evolution and therefore to speculate on what the General would have decided about present affairs

[p. 214]

is fruitless. In fact, ever more people think that because the community is increasingly a political organization, it becomes necessary to take a European position in defence. This evolution is very likely to continue.

9. The Influence of Liberalism

Bolkestein: What influence do Liberals have in the European Parliament?

Rey: There are 40 Liberals in a Parliament of 410 members, or 10% of the total membership. The presence of the Liberals has been most important because we separate the leftist group, consisting of the Socialists, the Communists and some Christian Democrats, from the other half of Parliament, which is more conservative, consisting of the majority of the European People's Party, the Gaullists and the British Conservatives. The discipline within the Liberal group is stronger and more visible than in the other groups. It seems to me that in Europe, as in The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxemburg, Liberals do not form a large group, but they express an opinion that has existed for two centuries and that represents something which is essential for the equilibrium of our countries: to avoid, on the one hand, too socialist a system and, on the other, too much conservatism. The presence of Liberals in the middle creates solutions that are more moderate than if Liberals had not existed. Although Liberals are not very numerous, they are essential. Liberalism doesn't belong to the nostalgia of the past but to the hope of the future.